Interview With Toyosi Akerele, Founder Of RISE Networks
Recently, I chatted with Toyosi Akerele, founder of RISE Networks exclusively for HumanIPO and we spoke extensively on the current status of education in Nigeria. She talked about how her network is piquing the interest of Nigerian students in education via a new free online community - Passnownow. In the interview, she revealed that Java and Symbian apps for Passnownow will be launched next month (May).
Here I'm posting the interview in its entirety.
Paul: At the Social Media and Education
session held at the SMWLagos, Toyosi Akerele spoke extensively on the
precarious situation of the nation's education sector. So, let's start with the
question "who is to blame?"
Toyosi: The Nigerian education sector has undergone many changes since the attainment of independence about 53 years ago. The period shortly after independence, marked the glorious years in the sector. The prevalent indices then, pointed to a bright future for the country, which produced well-rounded and skilled manpower on which the country’s socio-economic and technological advancement relied on.
The period witnessed a strong public
school system, adequate funding of the few secondary and post-secondary institutions,
conducive work environment for teachers, well equipped science laboratories and
libraries, among others. The system equally enjoyed non interrupted academic
calendar across tiers. Higher institutions, on their part, enjoyed some levels
of academic freedom and robust students’ unionism.
The decade that followed the first
intervention of military rule signaled the beginning of the decay in the
sector. It also marked one of the deciding factors that led to the destruction
of the legacies of the independence years.
The
policy inconsistency and disregard for intellectualism by the successive
regimes, especially during the military era, led largely to such ills as brain
drain, decaying infrastructures, bastardisation of the teaching profession,
destruction of the public school system, workers’ strikes, frequent closures of
schools, students’ laziness, cultism, among others.
All
that have brought us to where we are now. Haven laid this background; I would
say the genesis of the poor state of Nigerian education system is largely
political. The bad news is; the situation keeps getting worse and the
government seems clueless – or maybe not doing enough to solve the various
obvious problems.
How was the idea for Passnownow hatched?
As a Nigerian - especially someone with
so much passion for the youth, I realized that the best way to stimulate the
interest of Nigerian students in education is to engage them through the means
they are already used to, what we describe as familiar channels of delivery. An
average Nigerian teenager today, owns a browser enabled phone. And what does he/she
do with it? Connect with friends on social media, and probably play games.
The
initiative was born out of the desire to help improve the learning culture of
young Nigerians and at the same time providing a platform to develop their
social skills. In this case, merging education with social interaction by
providing a platform that offers knowledge based interaction amongst young
people. Some of the reasons identified for this are the incessant abysmal
failure of students at WASSCE (West African Senior Secondary Certificate
Examination) and JAMB (Joint Admission Matriculation Board) examinations which
has raised a big question on the quality of education being received by students
in our secondary schools.
The
idea is to provide free access to self paced academic materials for students
preparing and studying for examinations, for it to serve as a rallying point
for knowledge seekers and students needing help with their studies.
Of
course, those are the main essence. But then, the site is much more than only
academics; my craving indeed was to develop truly educated Nigerian youths who
are academically sound, emotionally balanced and socially responsive and
responsible.
Who are the founding partners?
I conceived the idea and its framework;
wrote the concept note and shared it with my Team at Rise Networks and we
started to work it and kept it open for feedback and reviews by young
Nigerians. Months after, here it is. I will therefore, not be tempted to ascribe
the glory to myself as Team work has played a very key role in the development
of the Idea.
How does the project fit in to RISE Networks' objectives?
As you may well know, RISE Networks is a Leading Social Enterprise
with a deliberate interest in Technology and its relevance to Youth and
Education Development across Africa. Our Vision is to be the ultimate reference point in
Africa and the World as a hub of relevant knowledge resource and a Facilitator
of opportunities and platforms that improve the lives and livelihoods of
Nigeria's Youth, with an affirming commitment to empower and prepare them to
restore the dignity of Nigeria's Democracy and her steady Economic Growth. Part
of our core objectives is to “revitalize values by inculcating positive behavior
in the representatives of the future” and also to “build a new generation of
responsible leaders…” In this regard, Passnownow serves as a ‘catch and empower them young’
initiative whereby the values and attributes that are certain to make for a
greater Nigeria are being inculcated in our youth right from their early teen
years. We also believe that only an educated citizenry can demand mandatory
accountability from Government and also make the right choices and decisions.
Beyond that, our in-house Tutors are young and ambitious Star Teachers who have
now moved out of their comfort zone to embrace new trends and techniques in
delivering class content. All Passnownow.com Tutors work full time with us and
we find their contributions very rewarding to the entire process. It is
refreshing to see Nigerian Teachers in a new light as they become beacons of
hope in this generation as Edu-Technologists and Expert Online Tutors.
What are you trying to achieve with the website?
More than being a website,
Passnownow.com is a Community. Our aim is to give students the power to take
responsibility for their learning, and not just the educational system.
Education has taken a new dimension in the 21st century whereby you
can learn and educate yourself at your own pace. Information and invariably
Knowledge dissemination is at an unprecedented level in the world and we have
to take advantage of that in developing our man power as a country.
Obviously,
technology is a key tool in making this possible and that informed our
participation at the social media week and also the theme for our event. Creativity has been identified as a
potential tool for progress and thus education should focus on developing the creative
potential of students rather than “educating them out of their creativity”
because Education that tolerates
Ignorance is no Education at all.
Our
aim is to set young people up for excellent results in Tests and Exams, foster
real time useful learning and discussions as a lifelong habit and restore the
glory of Nigerian Education.
We
realize that in developed climes, instructional radio, Internet intervention
and interactive Television have constituted major paradigm shifts and
re-invigorated the system of Education. We have therefore employed this 3 prong
approach in ensuring that we can attain the goal of improving the quality of
education and interactions amongst Nigerian Youth.
Given
that the web is the new Teacher, Passnownow contains an online study platform
which provides Secondary / High School Students with upbeat, on-the-go
solutions to all Subjects in the simplest ways. Our intention is to gainfully
engage PASSNOWNOW users in the most excellent conditions using fun and
interactive methods and tools with which they can learn effectively.
With
Passnownow.com, we are catering to the needs of Nigerian Young People as we
equip them to become better informed, more knowledgeable, vast and well
educated. This is because there is a
direct relationship between the level of socio-economic growth and development
in a country and the quality of education in that country. The Exciting part of all these is that the content on the Site is All
FREE to use.
A major issue in Nigeria is data size. For the site to
achieve its set goals, Nigerian students need to be active on it. But there are
several pictures on it, even on the mobile platform, how are you ensuring that
visiting the site doesn't cost much?
We have just overhauled the site and
built a new version with the latest Tech Applications that make it adaptable
for any mobile browser to navigate with ease and speed. We have compressed the
sizes of images and even removed some where necessary. Technically, at the
moment, the site is very responsive and pretty quick to browse. We are in the
process of securing strategic partnerships with stakeholders in the IT and
Telecoms Industry who value the need to support Education. This will make
Passnownow.com Users can have very subsidized data rate, or even at no charge
at all.
An
Android app has been developed for the site. When did you realize that an
Android app is necessary?
The Android app had been in our plan
from the inception of the project. We realize that majority of our target
audience are mobile internet users and thus our aim is to develop apps for most
of the widely used phone technology in Nigeria. We will launch the JAVA and
SYMBIAN Applications for the Site in May of 2013. We are currently testing to
be sure that all the relevant features of passnownow.com and more education
pieces are integrated into them so that they are truly useful and of great
impact on Nigeria’s Education when we embark on our monitoring and evaluation
exercises at the year end.
Toyosi at SMWLagos2013 said the goal of the project is to
ensure that there is a drastic slash in the incidence of failures recorded at
exams. Specifically, she said she wants about 80% reduction in failure. But a
larger percentage of the students that fall into this category can't even afford
a mobile phone talk less of an Android enabled device. What's the plan to reach
this category of students who even need Passnownow more?
That will not be utterly true. Millions
of children in public schools have mobile phones, not matter how cheap they may
be, so our responsibility with passnownow.com is to refocus their interests and
show them how to turn their mobile phones into learning aids. Like I said earlier,
we have plans to develop apps for all the major Operating Systems. Before Children’s
day 2013, our Symbian app will be released. Most people in the group you
referred to use Symbian enables phones. With our symbian app and other
innovative measures, I believe that concern would have been greatly dealt with.
More so, remember I put a timeline of 6years to it as it will be somewhat
ludicrous for me to think that we can clear this rot within a year or two.
We
are also looking to deliver our content via SMS. Users with phones without
internet access can subscribe to our SMS service with options to choose what
content they want delivered to them on their phones. We are also remodeling our
content to fit into an offline framework deliverable to students in the
simplest forms.
Partnering with government - federal, state and local, has
been proven to be an effective means of reaching more end-users. What have you
done in this regard?
We had considered this position and are working on achieving such possible
partnerships in the nearest future. Certain State Governments who are embarking
on serious IT intervention in their Education Sectors have requested for our
content. PC Manufacturers and enablers are also opening discussions with us
along this line. The flipside is for the Government to see the need to partner
with us. In Nigeria today, Teachers are ill equipped and there are more
unqualified Teachers than the qualified one. Teachers do not cover the scheme
of work and there is no monitoring and evaluation process in our education
system to separate the wheat from the chaff. The Governments at levels in
Nigeria should also see the need to ensure that all Public Schools across the
country are fully set up with Computers and free internet access for the
students and Teachers.
How
are you publicizing the project to ensure that more students are accessing the
website?
We
adopted a three prong approach to publicizing this project; first, we are
creating awareness using new media platforms and ads on websites with
considerable traffic from our target audience. Due to our efforts so far, Pasnownow.com
is fast becoming a reference point on matters pertaining to youth and education
within Nigeria’s tech space. Secondly, we engage directly with our target
audience by visiting secondary schools and carrying out on ground activations
and awareness campaigns on Passnownow.com. For example, we were present at
GTBank Heritage cup and introduced Passnownow.com to thousands of students
during the Heritage cup quarter final matches. We have also started visiting
Schools to engage with Teachers and inform them that the content on
Passnownow.com is complimentary to theirs and as such, encourage their students
to study with it. Thirdly, we intend to also publicize this project through
adverts to be aired on major TV stations in the country. It is also worthy to
mention that several media companies have been very supportive.
What
is the average daily hit, which category of students visit more often?
For certain confidential reasons, we cannot discuss this in specifics but for
now but we have a high registration rate on the site daily and this has
reinforced our orientation that edu-technology is the future of learning in the
world and we are glad to be pioneers of this initiative that will make Nigerian
Students globally competitive.
At this period, which is the
examination period for students writing their final examinations and also JAMB/
UTME (Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination) is around the corner so we
have more students in this category visiting the site.
On the Hotstuff/Latest News page, news such as the story of
a 15-year-old boy that bagged 35 years jail sentence for shooting his fellow
students was shared. Do you think this is appropriate? And how do you ensure
that the target audience (students) is protected against bad news like the one
I just mentioned?
Our editorial policy places more emphasis on morals in this light. Granted, the
news item you referred to is a bad news. But what is the moral lesson behind
it? I’m sure you already know – it is bad to harm people, and if you do, there
is punishment for it. This is our message, and not an emphasis on the act
itself.
What are the short term and long term plans for Passnownow.com?
In the short term, we are working to
ensure our users get value adding content on Passnownow.com. We want to ensure
we provide them with simplified, easy to comprehend academic content based on
Nigeria’s educational curriculum. We want to be able to reach our target
audience irrespective of their choice of device whether Desktop computers,
laptops, mobile devices etc
In
the long term, we intend to scale up our medium of delivery to include
traditional media. Basically, we should be going on to set up a 24hr TV Station
specially dedicated to Teaching and we will be deploying all our resources to
achieve our target of about 80% reduction in failure rate at National
examinations in the coming years.
What is the public response to the initiative?
The response has been awesome as it
has been challenging. Challenging in terms of the expectations that students
now have of us to do more as we already set the pace and raised the stakes plus
we continue to push the envelope in terms of innovative ideas and how to apply
good use of technology and a skilled and highly motivated team to solve the
social problems around us.
No
Nation that experienced development was transformed by cheap talk, chatter or
complaints; we need to start putting our money where our mouths are and create
long lasting solutions to Nigeria’s problems. We continue to receive tremendous
positive feedback and commendations from Nigerians and it is obvious we are on
the right track with Passnownow.com.
In
time to come, I strongly believe Passnownow.com will be the home school for
Nigerian students; the only element they may miss are the physical school
buildings which we will replace in their minds with our online Tutors who will
be available to interact with them online/offline all the time via our free
chat service.
Tags:
android ,
apps ,
education ,
JAMB ,
java ,
NECO ,
Nigeria ,
online community ,
passnownow ,
RISE Networks ,
school ,
SMWLagos ,
SSCE ,
students ,
symbian ,
Toyosi Akerele ,
WAEC
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